Americans consume roughly seventeen billion quarts of popped popcorn annually or about fifty-nine quarts per man, woman and child. A significant percentage of that popcorn is eaten in theaters, stadiums, and other places of public entertainment. Many consumers especially enjoy melted butter, oil-based butter flavorings, and other liquid flavorings applied to their popcorn. Typically, molten liquid flavoring is poured over individual bags or boxes of popcorn from an automatic butter warmer and dispenser at time of sale by the concessionaire. More frequently, self-service pump systems are being provided for enabling a customer to dispense melted butter or another such flavoring to his or her own popcorn. Thus, a customer may apply a desired quantity of butter onto the popcorn.
Unfortunately, pouring melted butter or the like over popcorn leaves only a portion of the kernels buttered. That is, the top portion of the bag or box of popcorn may be laden with molten butter, while the bottom portion of the popcorn may be completely without butter. Such a situation is undesirable in that the saturated popcorn kernels become soggy, while the dry popcorn kernels are absent the appealing flavor of the butter, for which the customer may pay extra to obtain. In addition, the customer often gets his or her fingers thoroughly coated with butter when eating the butter saturated popcorn kernels.
Yet another problem with the pump-style butter dispensers is that the butter can splatter onto the floor behind the counter where the concessionaire is working, or worse, the butter can splatter onto the floor at the self-service station when the butter is dispensed by multiple customers frequenting such a station. The spilled butter and oil-based butter flavorings cause the floor around these dispensers to get very slippery, thus creating a hazardous situation for the concessionaire and/or customer.
Attempts have been made to alleviate the shortcomings of the conventional pump-style butter dispenser through the application of a mist of butter or butter flavoring onto the popcorn. For example, one prior art device, operable by a concessionaire, includes a hopper for popcorn. An operator opens a large bag of pre-popped popcorn at the bottom and places it into the hopper. This bag of pre-popped popcorn can thus be utilized to fill multiple individual containers. The popcorn is warmed by a heating lamp, and the popcorn is dispensed through an opening at the bottom of the hopper. As the popcorn is dispensed through the opening, a spray nozzle closely adjacent the opening sprays a mist of molten butter or other flavoring onto the falling popcorn.
While such a device may more uniformly apply butter or butter flavoring onto popcorn than prior art pump-style butter dispensers, it still suffers from problems associated with non-uniformity of butter application. In particular, the popcorn passing closest to the spray nozzle may be more thickly coated, while blocking the mist to the more distant kernels, thus producing a non-uniform distribution of flavoring. In addition, the device is configured for operation by the concessionaire, and since it is utilized to dispense multiple containers of popcorn, the popcorn can only be treated with a single, non-variant application of flavoring. As such, this prior art device cannot be utilized at a self-service station of a business establishment. Nor can the customer control the quantity of butter to be applied to his or her own popcorn.
Accordingly, what is needed is an apparatus for enabling a customer to uniformly apply a desired quantity of flavoring to a food product such as popcorn.